Biomedical physics in continuing medical education: an analysis of learning needs

Ričardas Rotomskis, Violeta Karenauskaitė¹, Aistė Balžekienė²

Institute of Oncology, ¹Faculty of Physics, Vilnius University, ²Faculty of Social Sciences, Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania

Key words: biomedical physics; continuing medical education; medical professionals; qualification improvement.

Summary. Objective. To examine the learning and practice needs of medical professionals in the field of continuing education of biomedical physics in Lithuania.

Material and methods. The study was based on a questionnaire survey of 309 medical professionals throughout Lithuania, 3 focus group discussions, and 18 interviews with medical and physics experts.

Results. The study showed that medical professionals lack knowledge of physics: only 15.1% of the respondents admitted that they had enough knowledge in biomedical physics to understand the functioning of the medical devices that they used, and 7.5% of respondents indicated that they had enough knowledge to understand and adopt medical devices of the new generation. Physics knowledge was valued more highly by medical professionals with scientific degrees. As regards continuing medical education, it was revealed that personal motivation (88.7%) and responsibility for patients (44.3%) were the most important motives for upgrading competencies, whereas workload (65.4%) and financial limits (45.3%) were the main obstacles. The most popular teaching methods were those based on practical work (78.9%), and the least popular was project work (27.8%).

Conclusions. The study revealed that biomedical physics knowledge was needed in both specializations and practical work, and the most important factor for determining its need was professional aspirations. Medical professionals’ understanding of medical devices, especially those of the new generation, is essentially functional in nature. Professional upgrading courses contain only fragmented biomedical physics content, and new courses should be developed jointly by experts in physics and medicine to meet the specialized needs of medical professionals.

Correspondence to V. Karenauskaitė, Faculty of Physics, Vilnius University, Saulėtekio 9, 3 korp., 10222 Vilnius, Lithuania. E-mail: violeta.karenauskaite@ff.vu.lt

Received 17 November 2008, accepted 6 November 2009